Iqbal Sacranie

Sir Iqbal Abdul Karim Mussa Sacranie, OBE (born 6 September 1951[1] in Malawi) served as Secretary General of the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) until June 2006. He arrived in the UK in 1969. He was founding Secretary General of the Muslim Council of Britain (established 1997), and served four further years as Secretary General from 2002 to 2004 and 2004 to 2006. He was honoured with an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1999, and was Knighted by the Queen in 2005.[2]

During the controversy on Salman Rushdie, shortly after the fatwa by Iranian religious leader Ayatollah Khomeini for his book The Satanic Verses, Sacranie famously stated: "Death, perhaps, is a bit too easy for him his mind must be tormented for the rest of his life unless he asks for forgiveness to Almighty Allah."[3] Sacranie states that this quotation was misinterpreted and that he merely wanted to convince Muslims that they should not kill Rushdie.[4]